We here at Schlock
Treatment like to dig deep. Deeeeeep. So when Little Boy Blue
suddenly appeared on the radar out of nowhere, believe me it’s an
obscure one: a childish Catholic-laced E.T. ripoff from the
Philippines, featuring a large blueberry that’s been molested by a
Teletubby. Painful, infuriating, and at times like trying to stop a
runaway bus with your teeth, it is nevertheless lovably dumb and, as
far as lovably dumb Pinoy parodies go, one of the dumbest.

A squat
stopper-shaped spaceship is spotted over Batangas, practically over
the heads of three pre-teen cousins living in a simple nearby barrio.
After their extended prayers – this is a devout Catholic family,
you’ll need to remember - the kids beg their grandmother Panchang
to tell stories of aliens – unbeknownst to them, at the same time
the strange craft lands in the jungle. Aliens, says Panchang, descend
from the heavens to punish the wicked. Just like Jesus, or, come to
think of it, like Santa Claus. Back in the jungle the spaceship opens
and out bounces a round rubber blue thing covered in squid suckers,
and it takes refuge in the kids’ barn. The two young boys, Ato and
the twitchy Empoy, are woken by strange sounds and uncover the
creature scoffing the family corn. And what a creature it is: a head
somewhere between a Gremlin and bloated Yoda atop a furry scrotum and
Big Bird feet. And blue: all fluro blue, and emitting sounds like a
mid-butchered veal (“Nyip! Nyip! Nyip!”). They argue over what to
call it. “Do you remember the film ‘Extra Terrestrial?’” asks
Ato. Tiny Terrestrial, they agree, or TT for short. “You’re just
jealous,” they yell at their female cousin Neneng, the Drew
Barrymore of this bizarre parallel universe, “that we have a TT
[“titi” being Tagalog slang for penis] and you don’t.” They
also settle on Little Boy Blue, and Neneng bonds with the gentle
creature by pressing her finger lightly against TT’s rubber prong.
It’s a touching scene in more ways than one, aiming for the emotion
of Spielberg’s original but marred somewhat by TT’s high pitched
bleating.

Of course you can’t
have an ET clone without the meddling adult scientists, and at alien
research group PAGNANASA’s headquarters, pretty young scientist Dr
Delgado (and by young, I mean seventeen or eighteen) runs TT’s
craft through a battery of tests. She believes the ship has emerged
from inner space, not outer, and may be a relic from the lost city of
Atlantis, thus proving the ranting renegade Dr Galileo’s theories
correct. In Little Boy Blue there’s much discussion about Plato,
and how the destruction of Atlantis is comparable to the fall of
Sodom and Gomorrah. Huh? Don’t worry, it makes more sense soon…
Dr Delgado’s limp-wristed boss Zarate orders her to head a team to
capture the alien and perform further experiments. Her final
analysis: TT is “gentle and very easy to love”. In another
section of the scientific community the insane Galileo pays a goon
squad headed by “Crocodile” Danding to kidnap Little Boy Blue and
show the world just how sane he really is. Try to find the creature,
however – TT spends much of his Earth time running around the
village draped in a sheet or at the nearsighted Grandma Panchang’s
house learning how Jesus is “God to all peoples”. Before you can
say “Hail Mary” he’s kissing rosary beads and crossing himself,
and in the film’s most uncomfortable moment, has a religious
epiphany whilst comparing his own suffering to a wooden Jesus on a
crucifix. You can imagine when he returns triumphantly to his home
planet, like a round blue Conquistador, there are going to be
conversions a-plenty.

A lame-duck Sunday
School pantomime, or a Spielberg spoof that landed eight years too
late? I’m having money each way. For all its inherent absurdity and
ecumenical leanings, Little Boy Blue is a feeble-minded effort, a
throwaway project clearly written on the hoof by the team who brought
you the (ahem) superior Alyas Batman En Robin. I’d say it’s an
easy bet that Joey de Leon and Tony Reyes don’t even remember
flipping this cheap quickie off; at the time, writer/director Reyes
and comedian Joey were the busiest creative unit in Filipino comedy,
clocking in at around ten features each per year, and considered the
top box office draw of 1989. Not everything they touch turned to
gold, however, but they certainly give it the old Quezon City try,
and for marquee value Joey phones in a cameo as PAGNANASA’s
Professor Presto (he’s been peering at Venus – not the planet but
his new secretary, fnyar fnyar). The usual suspects are rounded up
and given their regulation two minutes of screen time: toothless and
heartbroken Rene Requiestas is a barrio bum named Stallone who sees
little blue monsters even before his first sip of Tanduay, and TVJ’s
regular sidekick Richie D’Horsie strums a tasteful song about dying
of cancer.

The film’s major
flaws are its leaden pacing courtesy of director Eddie Reyes (son?
Brother? Of Tony), its sledgehammer morality, and discomforting
attempts at toilet humour aimed at an older demographic than its
intended audience of under-tens. None of this is meant as harsh
criticism, of course, and the gaping wounds are an essential part of
its charm. When I use words like “unbearable”, I mean it with a
father’s love for his hopelessly naïve and sugar-addicted infant.
For me, I don’t know who’s more unbearable, and I love them
equally and unconditionally – the child actor playing Empoy
(another of the ubiquitous Reyes, this time Jay-Are), who delivers
every line like he’s sleepwalking and trying to create static
electricity by brushing both ears, or TT himself, the nyipping
testicle betraying not a single emotion from under its rubber mat.
His one discernable word – “Bye!” – comes not a moment too
soon, and I for one wish Little Boy Blue so long, bon voyage, and
thanks for the screaming.

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HERR LEAVOLD

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines’ pyramid of power.

He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.